Eye Opener

Pete Doherty — regularly in the news for his on-off relationship with Kate Moss and his notable drugs intake — once shared this run-down two-bedroom flat with Carl Barat, his former partner in the rock band the Libertines. They moved into the flat, near Bethnal Green, after signing a record deal in 2001, furnishing it with junk-shop ephemera such as a tatty Union Jack and an accordion hanging from the ceiling. There was no running water, so they filled the toilet cistern with Evian. Doherty and Barat called it "the Albion Rooms", after a mythical ship dreamt up as a metaphor for their "voyages".

Their friend Pete Welsh relates in his biography of the band, Kids in the Riot, how they kept £50 notes in the fridge to pay drug dealers; how